Thursday, January 14, 2010

Progress


Yesterday in San Francisco, leading members of the California wine industry announced a major step forward in improving the "sustainability" of vineyards and winery facilities. As I wrote in a story for decanter.com, the state industry has deveoped a new program for independent sustainable certification of wineries and vineyards.

Vintners and grape growers have been educating themselves and taking action in their businesses for years -- in fact the wine industry is seen as progressive and pioneering in this among agricultural sectors -- to improve the viticultural, environmental and social aspects of their businesses while remaining economically viable.

But since “sustainable” has been the buzzword of the decade -- meaning everything from eliminating herbicides and pesticides in the vineyards to slapping a single solar panel on a winery building -- it was important for the industry to provide concrete standards and ratings.

So now, under the Certified California Sustainable Winegrowing program, wineries have steps to folow and a way to prove to consumers, retailers and each other that they are taking those steps to farm, produce, package and transport wine sustainably.

The program is voluntary, but the majority of wineries and growers in the state have particpated in educational workshops and pilot programs since their inception in 2002.

The program does not concern itself with informing consumers about the sustainability of a certain product; no information will appear on wine bottles. The people leading this charge say only that it's not a "consumer-facing issue," but why not? It is consumers who are clamoring for eco and green products and growing more concerned with what they're putting in their bodies. So let's hope that informing consumers becomes a priority soon.

1 comment:

  1. Thank you for writing about the new California Certified Sustainable Winegrowing (CCSW-certified) program.

    It's not that we aren't concerned about informing consumers about the sustainability of our products - it's a bit more complicated. CCSW-Certified provides third-party verification of a winery and/or vineyard's adherence to a process of continuous improvement in the adoption of sustainable practices. While these positive practices ultimately produce winegrapes and wine, the program is focused on the winery and vineyard operations, which isn't the same as certifying the product. For this, and other issues in the evolving arena of "green" claims, we decided to refrain from allowing logos on bottles at this time.

    Even so, interested consumers have access to a number of other information sources to determine if a winery or vineyard is certified. For instance, certified members are listed on the CSWA website: www.sustainablewinegrowing.org -- and certified wineries and vineyards can also use the CCSW-Certified logo on their websites, promotional materials, and on shelf talkers and other "secondary packaging." We are also considering options for evolving the program to allow the use of an eco-lable, perhaps by adding perfomance metrics (another project that the CA wine community is currently undertaking), in the future, but felt this is the appropriate next step for the industry.

    The program is newly launched, and we have quite a bit of outreach and education to do both within the CA wine community, and next with gatekeepers and consumers. Please stay tuned as the program evolves!

    Allison Jordan
    Executive Director, California Sustainable Winegrowing Alliance

    ReplyDelete